4. Christian Unity by Necessity
In Ontario, Springfield Township, Richland County, there were three churches,—Presbyterian, United Presbyterian, and Methodist Episcopal. Because many of the best families had left, the Presbyterian churches have held no regular services since the year 1900. For a time the Methodist Episcopal Church shared a resident minister with three or four other churches, but from 1912 Springfield Township was left without a resident minister for three years. Under these circumstances it was inevitable that social and moral decline should begin, for the modern community’s needs cannot be met by the old-fashioned circuit system. More and more the better families moved away or relapsed into the background, and the less moral elements became conspicuous. A dance hall became the haunt of disorderly people from neighboring towns. Drunkenness grew apace, while bad language on the streets was altogether too common. Pilfering the property of the railroad was more or less open. It was high time to act.
Accordingly, the people of all the denominations and the non-church people who lived in the township, realizing that it was going from bad to worse, joined in deciding that a resident minister was necessary. Money was raised, and the future support of a minister was promised if the Methodist Episcopal Conference would send them a good man.
The new minister began his work in the autumn of 1915. The total budget of the church had been about $500, of which less than $250 went to the minister’s salary. During his first year, $1,540 was raised, $900 of which went for the support of the minister. In the second year no less than $7,500 was raised, $1,000 for the minister’s salary, $540 for ordinary expenses, while the rest went to the permanent repairs on the church buildings.
As in Ashley, so in Springfield Township; the pastor regarded his church as a community church and thought of himself as a Christian rather than as a sectarian. The attendance more than doubled both at the church services and at the Sunday school, while the real membership increased from less than 100 to 315. When the Presbyterians saw the manifest good that could be brought by united Christian action, they became members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, while later on they made a Christmas present of their building to the Methodist community church. It is now used as the house of worship, while the Methodist Church has become a gymnasium and parish house.
Under the leadership of the new resident minister a genuine cleaning up of the gross indecency was made, some of the most harmful characters left, and the place became comparatively orderly. The village has been transformed from a rural slum to a very decent community,—a safe place to bring up children. This better state of things will undoubtedly continue as long as the present system of church work prevails.
The plan of this church’s work did not differ from that of many other modern country churches. It included Sunday school classes organized for social service, athletics, including basket ball, a full program of social activities, lectures to promote an intelligent interest in agriculture, and active interest on the part of the minister in coöperating with the day schools and providing opportunities for intellectual advancement.
The pastor declares that the work in Springfield Township was made possible only because he could live in the community, because he could give his whole time to this field, and because of the program of country church service with which, through the Conference of the Commission on Church and Country Life which was held in Columbus in 1915 and through modern country church literature, he had become familiar. He asserts that without the modern program and conception of the function of the country church, success would have been impossible.
5. The Church as a Force for Righteousness
In the work at Ashley and Ontario we have seen the adoption of a good program accompanied by improvement in the moral tone and religious atmosphere of the communities. There are many other communities where a similar program has been carried out, with the same results. These cases constitute a fairly conclusive demonstration that the varied community life which is stimulated and made possible by the modern country church program is the normal one, and that without these various activities general moral and religious health is impossible.